The Indictment Against Christianity

________________________________________________
Title:     The Indictment Against Christianity
Author: William Ralph Inge [More Titles by Inge]

(1917)

No thinking man can deny that this war has grievously stained the reputation of Europe. Even if the verdict of history confirms the opinion that the conspiracy which threw the torch into the powder-magazine was laid by a few persons in one or two countries, and that the unparalleled outrages which have accompanied the conflict were ordered by a small coterie of brutal officers, we cannot forget that these crimes have been committed by the responsible representatives of a civilised European power, and that the nation which they represent has shown no qualms of conscience. That such a calamity, the permanent results of which include a holocaust of European wealth and credit, accumulated during a century of unprecedented industry and ingenuity, the loss of innumerable lives, and the destruction of all the old and honourable conventions which have hitherto regulated the intercourse of civilised nations with each other, in war as well as in peace, should have been possible, is justly felt to be a reproach to the whole continent, and especially to the nations which have taken the lead in its civilisation and culture. The ancient races of Asia, which have never admitted the moral superiority of the West, are keenly interested spectators of our suicidal frenzy. A Japanese is reported to have said, 'We have only to wait a little longer, till Europe has completed her hara kiri.' This is, indeed, what any intelligent observer must think about the present struggle. Just as the feudal barons of England destroyed each other and brought the feudal system to an end in the Wars of the Roses, so the great industrial nations are rending to pieces the whole fabric of modern industrialism, which can never be reconstructed. Mr. Norman Angell was perfectly right in his argument that a European war would be ruinous to both sides. The material objects at stake, such as the control of the Turkish Empire and the African continent, are not worth more than an insignificant fraction of the war-bill. We are witnessing the suicide of a social order, and our descendants will marvel at our madness, as we marvel at the senseless wars of the past.

There has, it is plain, been something fundamentally wrong with European civilisation, and the disease appears to be a moral one. With this conviction it is natural that men should turn upon the official custodians of religion and morality, and ask them whether they have been unfaithful to their trust, or whether it is not rather proved that the faith which they profess is itself bankrupt and incapable of exerting any salutary influence upon human character and action. Christianity stands arraigned at the bar of public opinion. But it is not without significance that the indictment should now be urged with a vehemence which we do not find in the records of former convulsions. It was not generally felt to be a scandal to Christianity that England was at war for 69 years out of the 120 which preceded the battle of Waterloo. Either our generation expected more from Christianity, or it was far more shocked by the sudden outbreak of this fierce war than our ancestors were by the almost chronic condition of desultory campaigning to which they were accustomed. The latter is probably the true reason. The belief in progress, which at the beginning of the industrial revolution was an article of faith, had become a tacitly accepted presupposition of all serious thought; and even those who were dubious about the moral improvement of mankind in other directions, seldom denied that we were more humane and peaceable than our forefathers. The disillusion has struck our self-complacency in its most vital spot. Nothing in our own experience had prepared us for the hideous savagery and vandalism of German warfare, the first accounts of which we received with blank amazement and incredulity. Then, when disbelief was no longer possible, there awoke within us a sense of fear for our homes and women and children--feeling to which modern civilised man had long been a stranger. We had not supposed that the non-combatant population of any European country would ever again be exposed to the horrors of savage warfare. This, much more than the war itself, has made thousands feel that the house of civilisation is built upon the sand, and that Christianity has failed to subdue the most barbarous instincts of human nature. Christians cannot regret that the flagrant contradiction between the principles of their creed and the scenes that have been enacted during the last three years is fully recognised. But the often repeated statement that 'Christianity has failed' needs more examination than it usually receives from those who utter it.

History acquaints us with two kinds of religion, which, though they are not entirely separate from each other, differ very widely in their effects upon conduct and morality. The religio which Lucretius hated, and from which he strangely hoped that the atomistic materialism of Epicurus had finally delivered mankind, has its roots in the sombre and confused superstitions of the savage. Fear, as Statius and Petronius tell us, created the gods of this religion. These deities are mysterious and capricious powers, who exact vengeance for the transgression of arbitrary laws which they have not revealed, and who must be propitiated by public sacrifice, lest some collective punishment fall on the tribe, blighting its crops and smiting its herds with murrain, or giving it over into the hand of its enemies. This religion makes very little attempt to correct the current standard of values. Its rewards are wealth and prosperity; its punishments are calamity in this world and perhaps torture in the next. It is not, however, incapable of moralisation. The wrath of heaven may visit not the innocent violation of some tabu, but cruelty and injustice. In the historical books of the Old Testament, though Uzzah is stricken dead for touching the ark, and the subjects of King David afflicted with pestilence because their ruler took a census of his people, Jehovah is above all things a righteous God, who punishes bloodshed, adultery, and social oppression. So in Greece the Furies pursue the homicide and the perjurer, till the name of his family is clean put out. Herodotus tells us how the family of Glaucus was extinguished because he consulted the oracle of Delphi about an act of embezzlement which he was meditating.

International law was protected by the same fear of divine vengeance. The murder of heralds must by all means be expiated. When the Romans repudiate their 'scrap of paper' with the Samnites, they deliver up to the enemy the officers who signed it, though (with characteristic 'slimness') not the army which the mountaineers had captured and liberated under the agreement. To destroy the temples in an enemy's country was an act of wanton impiety; Herodotus cannot understand the religious intolerance which led the Persians to burn the shrines of Greek gods. Thus religion had a restraining influence in war throughout antiquity, and in the Middle Ages. The Pope, who was believed to hold the keys of future bliss and torment, was frequently, though by no means always, obeyed by the turbulent feudal lords, and often enforced the sanctity of a contract by the threat or the imposition of excommunication and interdict. In order to make these penalties more terrible, the torments of those who died under the displeasure of the Church were painted in the most vivid colours. But in the official and popular Christian eschatology, as in the terrestrial theodicy of the Old Testament, there is little or no moral idealism. The joys or pains of the future life are made to depend, in part at least, on the observance or violation of the moral law, but they are themselves of a kind which the natural man would desire or dread. They are an enhanced, because a deferred, retribution of the same kind which in more primitive religions promises earthly prosperity to the righteous, and earthly calamities to the wicked. Values, positive and negative, are taken nearly as they stand in the estimation of the average man.

But there is another religious tradition, which in Greece was almost separated from the official and national cults, and among the Hebrews was often in opposition to them. The Hebrew prophets certainly proclaimed that 'the history of the world is the judgment of the world,' and often assumed, too crudely as it seems to us, that national calamities are a proof of national transgression; but the whole course of development in prophecy was towards an autonomous morality based on a spiritual valuation of life. Its quarrel with sacerdotalism was mainly directed against the unethical tabu-morality of the priesthood; the revolt was grounded in a lofty moral idealism, which found expression in a half-symbolic vision of a coming state in which might and right should coincide. The apocalyptic prophecies of post-exilic Judaism, which were not based, like some political predictions of the earlier prophets, on a statesmanlike view of the international situation, but on hopes of supernatural intervention, had their roots in visions of a new and better world-order. This aspiration, which had to disentangle itself by degrees from the patriotic dreams of a stubborn and unfortunate race, was projected into the near future, and was mixed with less worthy political ambitions which had a different origin. The prophet always foreshortens his revelation, and generally blends the city of God with a vision of his own country transfigured. We see him doing this even to-day, in his Utopian dreams of social reconstruction.

And so it has always been. We remember Condorcet foretelling a reign of truth and peace just before he was compelled to flee from the storm of calumny to die in a damp cell at Bourg la Reine; and Kant hailing the approach of a peaceful international republic while Napoleon was preparing to drown Europe in blood. Apocalyptism is a compromise between the religion of rewards and punishments and the religion of spiritual deliverance. It calls a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old; but its discontent with the old is mainly the result of a moral and spiritual valuation of life. Greek philosophy has really much in common with Hebrew prophecy, though the Greek envisaged his ideal world as the eternal background of reality, and not under the form of history. In its maturest form, it is a transvaluation of all values in accordance with an absolute ideal standard--that of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. This idealism appears in a still more drastic form in the religions of Asia, which preach deliverance by demonetising at a stroke all the world's currency. Spiritual values are alone accepted; man wins peace and freedom by renouncing in advance all of which fortune may deprive him.

We are apt to assume, in deference to our theories of human progress, that the evolution of religion is normally from a lower to a higher type. It would, indeed, be absurd to question that the religion of a civilised people is usually more spiritual and more rational than that of barbarians. But none the less, the history of religions is generally a history of decline. In Judaism the prophets came before the Scribes and the Pharisees. Brahmanism and Buddhism were both degraded by superstitions and unethical rites. Christianity, which began as a republication of the purest prophetic teaching, has suffered the same fate. In each case, when the revelation has lost its freshness, and the enthusiasm which it evoked has begun to cool, a reversion to older habits of thought and customs takes place; and sometimes it may be said that the old religion has really conquered the new.

Christianity, as taught by its Founder, is based on a transvaluation of values even more complete than that of Stoicism and the later Platonism, because, while it regards the objects of ordinary ambition as a positive hindrance to the higher life, it accepts and gives value to those pains of sympathy which Greek thought dreaded, as detracting from the calm enjoyment of the philosophic life. This acceptance of the world's suffering, from which every other spiritual religion and philosophy promise a way of escape, is perhaps the most distinctive feature of Christian ethics. In practice, it thus achieves a more complete conquest of evil than any other system; and by bringing sorrow and sympathy into the Divine life, it not only presents the character and nature of the Deity in a new light, but opens out a new ideal of moral perfection. This is not the place for a discussion of the main characteristics of the Gospel of Christ, and they are familiar to us all. But, since we are now considering the charge of failure brought against Christianity in connexion with the present world-war, it seems necessary to emphasise two points which are not always remembered.

The first is that there is no evidence that the historical Christ ever intended to found a new institutional religion. He neither attempted to make a schism in the Jewish Church nor to substitute a new system for it. He placed Himself deliberately in the prophetic line, only claiming to sum up the series in Himself. The whole manner of His life and teaching was prophetic. The differences which undoubtedly may be found between His style and that of the older prophets do not remove Him from the company in which He clearly wished to stand. He treated the institutional religion of His people with the independence and indifference of the prophet and mystic; and the hierarchy, which, like other hierarchies, had a sure instinct in discerning a dangerous enemy, was not slow to declare war to the knife against Him. Such, He reminded His enemies, was the treatment which all the prophets had met with from the class to which those enemies belonged. This, then, is the first fact to remember. Institutional Christianity may be a legitimate and necessary historical development from the original Gospel, but it is something alien to the Gospel itself. The first disciples believed that they had the Master's authority for expecting the end of the existing world-order in their own lifetime. They believed that He had come forward with the cry of 'Hora novissima!' Whether they misunderstood Him or not, they clearly could not have held this opinion if they had received instructions for the constitution of a Church.

The second point on which it is necessary to insist is that Christ never expected, or taught His disciples to expect, that His teaching would meet with wide acceptance, or exercise political influence. 'The world'--organised human society--was the enemy and was to continue the enemy. His message, He foresaw, would be scorned and rejected by the majority; and those who preached it were to expect persecution. This warning is repeated so often in the Gospels that it would be superfluous to give quotations. He made it quite plain that the big battalions are never likely to be gathered before the narrow gate. He declared that only false prophets are well spoken of by the majority. When we consider the revolutionary character of the Christian idealism, its indifference to nearly all that passes for 'religion' with the vulgar, and its reversal of all current valuations, it is plain that it is never likely to be a popular creed. As surely as the presence of high spiritual instincts in the human mind guarantees its indestructibility, so surely the deeply-rooted prejudices which keep the majority on a lower level must prevent the Gospel of Christ from dominating mundane politics or social life.

Moreover, the actual extent of its influence cannot be estimated. The inwardness and individualism of its teaching make its apparent effectiveness smaller than its real power, which works secretly and unobserved. The vices which Christ regarded with abhorrence are perversions of character--hypocrisy, hard-heartedness, and worldliness or secularity; and who can say what degree of success the Gospel has achieved in combating these? The method of Christianity is alien to all externalism and machinery; it does not lend itself to those accommodations and compromises without which nothing can be done in politics. As Harnack says, the Gospel is not one of social improvement, but of spiritual redemption. Its influence upon social and political life is indirect and obscure, operating through a subtle modification of current valuations, and curbing the competitive and acquisitive instincts, which nearly correspond with what Christ called 'Mammon' and St. Paul 'the flesh.' Christianity is a spiritual dynamic, which has very little to do directly with the mechanism of social life.

It is, therefore, certain that when we speak of Christianity as a factor in human life, we must not identify it with the opinions or actions of the multitudes who are nominally Christians. We must not even identify it, without qualification, with the types of character exhibited by those who try to frame their lives in accordance with its precepts. For these types are very largely determined by the ideals which belong to the stage through which the life of the race is passing; and these differ so widely in different ages and countries that the historian of religion might well despair if he was compelled to regard them all as typical manifestations of the same idea. There are times when the disciple of Christ seems to turn his back upon society; he is occupied solely with the relation of the individual soul to God. These are periods when the opportunities for social service are much restricted by a faulty structure of the body politic; periods when secular civilisation is so brutal, or so servile, that the religious life can only be led in seclusion from it. At another time the typical Christian seems to be the active and valiant soldier of a militant corporation. At another, again, he is a philanthropist, who devotes his life to the redress of some great wrong, such as slavery, or the promotion of a more righteous system of production and distribution. In all these types we can trace the operation of the genius of Christianity, but they are partial manifestations of it, with much alien admixture. The spirit of the age, as well as the spirit of Christ, has moulded the various types of Christian piety.

If there has ever been a time when organised Christianity was a concrete embodiment of the pure principles of the Gospel, we must look for it in the era of the persecutions, when the Church had already gained coherence and discipline and a corporate self-consciousness, and was still preserved from the corrupting influence of secularity by the danger which attended the profession of an illicit creed. A vivid picture of the Christian communities at this period has been given by Dobschütz, whose learning and impartiality are unimpeachable. The Church at this time demanded from its followers an unreserved confession, even when this meant death. It was a brotherhood within which there was no privileged class. Men and women, the free and the slave, had an equal share in it. It abolished the fundamental Greek distinction of civilised and barbarian. It looked with contempt on none. Its great organisation was spread by purely voluntary means, till it gained a firm footing throughout the Empire and beyond it. To a large extent it was an association for mutual aid. Wherever anyone was in need, help was at hand. The tangible advantages of belonging to such a guild were so great that the Church had to enforce labour on all who could work, as a condition of sharing in the benefits of membership. Social distinctions, such as those of rich and poor, master and slave, were not abolished, but they had lost their sting, because genuine affection, loyalty and sympathy neutralised these inequalities. Great importance was laid on truth, integrity in business, and sexual purity. A complete rupture with pagan standards of morality was insisted on from new members. The human body must be kept holy, as the temple of God. Revenge was forbidden, and injustice was endured with meekness and pardon. This is no imaginary picture. In that brief golden age of the Church, such were indeed the characteristics of the Christian society. In the opinion of Dobschütz the moral condition of the Church in the second century was much higher than among St. Paul's converts in the first. The paucity of references to sins of the flesh, and to fraud, is to be accounted for by the actual rarity of such offences. For a short time, then, the artificial selection effected by the persecutions kept the Church pure; and from the happy pictures which we can reconstruct of this period we can judge what a really Christian society would be like.

The history of institutional Catholicism must be approached from a different side. Troeltsch argues with much cogency that the Catholic Church must be regarded rather as the last creative achievement of classical antiquity than as the beginning of the Middle Ages. Its growth belongs mainly to the political history of Europe; the strictly religious element in it is quite subordinate. There is, as Modernist critics have seen, a real break between the Palestinian Gospel and the elaborate mystery-religion, with its graded hierarchy, its Roman organisation, its Hellenistic speculative theology, which achieved the conquest of the Empire in the fourth century. The Church, as Loisy says, determined to survive and to conquer, and adapted itself to the demands of the time. It has travelled far from the simple teaching of the earthly Christ; though we may, if we choose, hold that His spirit continued to direct the growing and changing institution which, as a matter of history, had its source in the Galilean ministry. In truth, however, the extremely efficient organisation of the Roman Church began in self-defence and was continued for conquest. It is one of the strongest of all human institutions, so that it was said before the war that it is one of the 'three invincibles,' the other two being the German Army and the Standard Oil Trust.

But our admiration for the subtle and tenacious power of this corporation must not blind us to its essentially political character. Its policy has been always directed to self-preservation and aggrandisement; it is an imperium in imperio, which has only checked fanatical nationalism by the competing influence of a still more fanatical partisanship. In the present war, the problem before the Pope's councillors was whether the friendship of the Central Powers or that of the Entente was best worth cultivating; and the unshaken loyalty of Austria to the Church, together with a natural preference for German methods of governing as compared with democracy, turned the scale against us. In Ireland, in Canada and in Spain the Catholic priests have been formidable enemies of our cause. As for the other Churches, they have not the same power of arbitrating in national quarrels. The Russian Church has never been independent of the secular government; and the Anglican and Lutheran Churches can hardly be expected to be impartial when the vital interests of England or Germany are at stake. Lovers of peace have not much to hope for from organised religion. National Christianity, as Mr. Bernard Shaw says, will only be possible when we have a nation of Christs.

The downfall of the medieval European system, though in truth it was a theory rather than a fact, has removed some of the restraints upon war. The determining principle of the medieval political theory was the conception of a 'lex Dei,' which included the 'lex Mosis,' the 'lex Christi,' and the 'lex ecclesiae,' but which also, as 'lex naturæ,' comprised the law, science, and ethics of antiquity. These laws were super-national, and no nation dared explicitly to repudiate them. They formed the basis of a real system of international law, resting, like everything else in the Middle Ages, on supposed divine authority.

This theory, with its sanctions, was shattered at the Renaissance; and the Machiavellian doctrine of the absolute State, accepted by Bacon and put into practice by Frederick the Great, has prevailed ever since, though not without frequent protests. The rise of nationalities, each with an intense self-consciousness, has facilitated the adoption of a theory too grossly immoral to have found favour except in the peculiar circumstances of modern civilisation. The emergence of nationalities was often connected with a legitimate struggle for freedom; and at such times esprit de corps seems to be almost the sum of morality, the substitute for all other virtues. Loyalty is one of the most attractive of moral qualities, and it necessarily inhibits criticism of its own objects, which has the appearance of treason. But, unless the aims of the corporate body which claims our absolute allegiance are right and reasonable, loyalty may be, and often has been, the parent of hideous crimes, and a social evil of the first magnitude. The perversion of esprit de corps does incalculable harm in every direction, destroying all sense of honour and justice, of chivalry and generosity, of sympathy and humanity. It involves a complete repudiation of Christianity, which breaks down all barriers by ignoring them, and insists on love and justice towards all mankind without distinction. The worship of the State has during the last half-century been sedulously and artificially fostered in Germany, until it has produced a kind of moral insanity. Even philosophical historians like Troeltsch seem unable to see the monstrosity of a political doctrine which has caused his country to be justly regarded as the enemy of the whole human race. Eucken, writing some years before the war, in a rather gingerly manner deprecates Politismus as a national danger; but he does not dare to grasp the nettle firmly. It is possible that this deification of the State in Germany may be in part due to an unsatisfied instinct of worship. In Roman Catholic countries, where there must be a divided allegiance, patriotism never, perhaps, assumes such sinister and fanatical forms.

But we shall not understand the attraction which this naked immoralism in international affairs exercises over the minds of many who are not otherwise ignoble, if we do not remember that the repudiation of the Christian ethical standard has been equally thorough in commercial competition. The German officer believes himself to have chosen a morally nobler profession than that of the business-man; he serves (he thinks) a larger cause, and he is content with much less personal reward. Socialist assailants of our industrial system, much as they dislike war, would probably agree with him. It is not necessary to condemn all competition. The desire to excel others is not reprehensible, when the rivalry is in rendering useful social service. But it cannot be denied that the present condition of industry is such that a heavy premium is offered to mere cupidity; that the fraternal social life which Christianity enjoins is often literally impossible, except at the cost of economic suicide; and that in a competitive system a business man is, by the very force of circumstances, a warrior, though war is an enemy of love and destructive of Christian society. When the object of bargaining is to give as little and gain as much as possible, the Christian standard of values has been rejected as completely as it was by Machiavelli himself. The competition between two parties to a bargain is often a competition in unserviceableness. Money is very frequently made by creating a local and temporary monopoly, which enables the vendor to squeeze the purchaser. In all such transactions one man's gain is another man's loss. This state of things, the evils of which are almost universally recognised and deplored, marks the end of the glorification of productive industry which was one result of the Reformation.

Hardly anything distinguishes modern from medieval ethics more sharply than the emphasis laid by Protestant morality on the duty of making and producing something tangible. Theoretically the Protestant may hold that 'doing ends in death,' and he may sing these words on Sunday; but his whole life on week days is occupied in strenuous 'doing.' We find in Calvinism and Quakerism the genuinely religious basis of the modern business life, which, however, has degenerated sadly, now that the largest fortunes are made by dealing in money rather than in commodities. In the books of Samuel Smiles, and in Clough's poem beginning 'Hope ever more and believe, O Man,' we find the Gospel of productive work preached with fervour. It is out of favour now in England; but in America we still see quaint attempts to make business a religion, as in the Middle Ages religion was a business. In these circles, it is productive activity as such to which value is attached, without much enquiry as to the utility of the product. The result has been an immense accumulation of the apparatus of life, without any corresponding elevation in moral standards. The mischiefs wrought by modern commercialism are largely the fruit of the purely irrational production which it encourages. There are, says Professor Santayana, Nibelungen who toil underground over a gold which they will never use, and in their obsession with production begrudge themselves all inclinations to recreation, to merriment, to fancy. Visible signs of such unreason appear in the relentless and hideous aspect which life puts on; for those instruments which emancipate themselves from their uses soon become hateful. 'A barbaric civilisation, built on blind impulse and ambition, should fear to awaken a deeper detestation than could ever be aroused by those more beautiful tyrannies, chivalrous or religious, against which past revolutions have been directed.' We cannot, indeed, be surprised that this ideal of productive work as a means of grace, precious for its own sake, has no attraction for the masses, and that independent thinkers like Edward Carpenter should write books on 'Civilisation, its Cause and Cure.'

This Puritan ideal is not so much unchristian as narrow and unintelligent; but the money-making life has of late become more and more frankly predatory and anti-social. The great trusts, and the arts of the company-promoter, can hardly be said to perform any social service; they exist to levy tribute on the public. We may say therefore that, though war between the leading nations of the world had become a strange idea and a far-off memory, we had by no means risen above the principles and practices of war in our internal life. The immunity from militarism hitherto enjoyed by Britain and the United States was a fortunate accident, not a proof of higher morality. Our fleet protected both ourselves and the Americans from the necessity of maintaining a conscript army; but we had drifted into a condition in which civil war seemed not to be far off, and in which violence and lawlessness were increasing. By a strange inconsistency, many who on moral or religious grounds condemned wars between nations were found to condone or justify acts of war against the State, organised by discontented factions of its citizens. Revolutionary strikes, prepared long in advance by forced levies of money which were candidly called war-funds, had as their avowed aim the paralysis of the industries of the country and the reduction of the population to distress by withholding the necessaries of life. These acts of civil war, and disgraceful outbreaks of criminal anarchism, were justified by persons who professed a conscientious objection to defending their homes and families against a foreign invader. This state of mind proves how little essential connexion there is between democracy and peace. It discloses a confusion of ideas even greater than the antithesis between industrialism and militarism in the writings of Herbert Spencer. On this latter fallacy it is enough to quote the words of Admiral Mahan; 'As far as the advocacy of peace rests on material motives like economy and prosperity, it is the service of Mammon; and the bottom of the platform will drop out when Mammon thinks that war will pay better.' This is notoriously what has happened in Germany. A short war, with huge indemnities, seemed to German financiers a promising speculation. If such were the rotten foundations upon which anti-militarism in this country was based, the Churches cannot be blamed for giving the peace-movement a rather lukewarm support.

In Germany there was no internal anarchy, such as prevailed in England; there was also no illusion about the imminence of war. Our politicians ought to have read the signs of the times better; but they were too intent on feeling the pulse of the electorate at home to attend to disturbing and unwelcome symptoms abroad. The causes of the war are not difficult to determine. War has long been a national industry of Germany, and the idea of it evoked no moral repugnance. The military virtues were extolled; the military profession enjoyed an astonishing social prestige; the learned class proclaimed the biological necessity of international conflicts. The army believed itself to be invincible, and it had begun to control the policy of the country; where these two conditions exist, no diplomacy can avert war. Professionalism always has a selfish and anti-social element in its code, and the professionalism of the soldier is always prone to override the rights and disdain the scruples of civilians.

The dominant classes in Germany also found that their power was being undermined by the growing industrialisation. The steady increase in the social-democratic vote was a portent not to be disregarded. A letter from a German officer to a friend in Roumania, which found its way into the newspapers, tells a great deal of truth in a few words. 'You cannot conceive,' he wrote, 'what difficulty we had in persuading our Emperor that it was necessary to let loose this war. But it has been done; and I hope that for a long time to come we shall hear no more in Germany of pacifism, internationalism, democracy, and similar pestilent doctrines.' Sir Charles Walston, in his thoughtful book 'Aristodemocracy,' lays great stress on this. 'It appeared to me,' he says, 'ever since 1905, that in the immediate future it was all a question as to whether the labour-men, the practical pacifists, would arrive at the realisation of their power before the militarists had forced a war upon us, or whether the military powers would anticipate this result, and within the next few years force a war upon the world.' To the influence of the military was added the cupidity of the commercial and financial class. The law of diminishing returns was driving capital further and further afield; and large profits, it was hoped, might be made by the exploitation of backward countries and the reduction of their inhabitants to serfdom. To a predatory and parasitic class war seems only a logical extension of the principles upon which it habitually acts; and for this reason privileged orders seldom feel much moral compunction about a war-policy. Lastly, among the causes of the war must be reckoned one which has received far too little attention from social and political philosophers--the tenacious and half-unconscious memories of a race. Injustice comes home to roost, sometimes after an astonishingly long interval. The disaffection of Catholic Ireland would be quite unintelligible without the massacres of the sixteenth century and the unjust trade-legislation of the seventeenth and eighteenth. The bitterness of the working class in England has its roots in the earlier period of the industrial revolution (about 1760-1832), when the labourer, with his wife and children, was treated as the 'cannon-fodder' of industry. Similarly, the seeds of Prussian brutality and aggressiveness were sown at Jena and in the raiding of Prussia for recruits before the Moscow expedition. If such were the causes of the great world-war, how little can be hoped from courts of international arbitration!

These considerations have, perhaps, made it clear that the main causes of international conflicts are what the Epistle of St. James declares them to be--'the lusts that war in your members,' the pugnacious and acquisitive instincts which pervade our social life in times of peace, and not least in those nations which pride themselves on having advanced beyond the militant stage. There are some who accept this state of things as natural and necessary, and who blame Christianity for carrying on a futile campaign against human nature. This is a very different indictment from that which condemns Christianity for tolerating a preventible evil; and it is, in our opinion, even less justified. The argument that, because war has always existed, it must always continue to exist, is justly ridiculed by Mr. Norman Angell. 'It is commonly asserted that old habits of thought can never be shaken; that, as men have been, so they will be. That, of course, is why we now eat our enemies, enslave their children, examine witnesses with the thumbscrew, and burn those who do not attend the same church.'

The long history of war as a racial habit explains why a ruinous and insane anachronism shows such tenacity; for the conditions which established the habit among primitive tribes demonstrably no longer exist. It is probably true, as William James says, that 'militarist writers without exception regard war as a biological or sociological necessity'; lawyers might say the same about litigation. But laws of nature 'are not efficient causes, and it is open to any one to prove that they are not laws, if he can break them with impunity. It would be the height of pessimistic fatalism to hold that men must always go on doing that which they hate, and which brings them to misery and ruin. Man is not bound for ever by habits contracted during his racial nonage; his moral, rational, and spiritual instincts are as natural as his physical appetites; and against them, as St. Paul says, 'there is no law,' Huxley's Romanes Lecture gave an unfortunate support to the mischievous notion that the 'cosmic process' is the enemy of morality. The truth seems to be that Nature presents to us not a categorical imperative, but a choice. Do we prefer to pay our way in the world, or to be parasites? War, with very few exceptions, is a mode of parasitism. Its object is to exploit the labour of other nations, to make them pay tribute, or to plunder them openly, as the Germans have plundered the cities of Belgium. War is a parasitic industry; and Christianity forbids parasitism. Nature has her own penalties for the lower animals which make this choice, and they strike with equal severity 'the peoples that delight in war,' The bellicose nations have nearly all perished.

There remains, however, a class of wars which escapes this condemnation; and about them difficult moral problems may be raised. We can hardly deny to a growing and civilised nation the right to expand at the expense of barbarous hunters and nomads. No one would suggest that the Americans ought to give back their country to the Indians, or that Australia should be abandoned to the aborigines. But were the Anglo-Saxons justified in expropriating the Britons, and the Spaniards the Aztecs? There is room for differences of opinion in these cases; and a very serious problem may arise in the future, as to whether the European races are morally justified in using armed force to restrict Asiatic competition. As a general principle, we must condemn the expropriation of any nation which is in effective occupation of the soil. The popular estimate of superior and inferior races is thoroughly unchristian and unscientific, as is the prejudice against a dark skin. The opinion that a nation which is increasing in population has a right to expel the inhabitants of another country to make room for its own emigrants is surely untenable. If it justifies war at all, it sanctions a war of extermination, which would attain its objects most completely by massacring girls and young women. The pressure of population is a real cause of war; but the moral is, not that war is right, but that a nation must cut its coat according to its cloth, and limit its numbers.

Unless we justify wars of extermination, war has no biological sanction, and Christianity is not flying in the face of nature by condemning it. On the contrary, by condemning every form of parasitism, it indicates the true path of evolution. It is equally right in rejecting the purely economic valuation of human goods. The 'economic man' does not exist in nature; he is a fictitious creature who is responsible for a great deal of social injustice. Some modern economists, like Mr. Hobson, would substitute for the old monetary standards of production and distribution an attempt to estimate the 'human costs' of labour. Creative work involving ingenuity and artistic qualities is not 'costly' at all, unless the hours of labour, or the nervous strain, exceed the powers of the worker. More monotonous work is not costly to the worker if the day's labour is fairly short, or if some variety can be introduced. The human cost is greatly increased if the worker thinks that his labour is useless, or that it will only benefit those who do not deserve the enjoyment of its fruits. Work which only produces frivolous luxuries is and ought to be unwelcome to the producer, even if he is well paid. It must also be emphasised that worry and anxiety take the heart out of a man more than anything else. Security of employment greatly reduces the 'human cost' of labour. These considerations are comparatively new in political economy. They change it from a highly abstract science into a study of the conditions of human welfare as affected by social organisation. The change is a victory for the ideas of Buskin and Morris, though not necessarily for the practical remedies for social maladjustments which they propounded. It brings political economy into close relations with ethics and religion, and should induce economists to consider carefully the contribution which Christianity makes to the solution of the whole problem. For Christianity has its remedy to propose, and it is a solution of the problem of war, not less than of industrial evils.

Christianity gives the world a new and characteristic standard of values. It diminishes greatly the values which can accrue from competition, and enhances immeasurably the non-competitive values. 'A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.' 'Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?' 'The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.' Passages like these are found in every part of the New Testament. This Christian idealism has a direct bearing on the doctrine of 'human costs.' Work is irksome, not only when it is excessive or ill-paid, but when the worker is lazy, selfish, envious or discontented. There is one thing which can make almost any work welcome. If it is done from love or unselfish affection, the human cost is almost nil, because it is not counted or consciously felt. This is no exaggeration when it is applied to the devoted labour of the mother and the nurse, or to that of the evangelist conscious of a divine vocation. But in all useful work the keen desire to render social service, or to do God's will, diminishes to an incalculable extent the 'human cost' of labour. This principle introduces a deep cleavage between the Christian remedy and that of political socialism, which fosters discontent and indignation as a lever for social amelioration. Men are made unhappy in order that they may be urged to claim a larger share of the world's wealth. Christianity considers that, measured by human costs, the remedy is worse than the disease. The adoption of a truer standard of value would tear up the lust of accumulation by the roots, and would thus effect a real cure. It would also stop the grudging and deliberately bad work which at present seriously diminishes the national wealth.

The Christian cure is the only real cure. It is the fashion to assume that militarism and cupidity are vices of the privileged classes, and that democracies may be trusted neither to plunder the minority at home nor to seek foreign adventures by unjust wars. There is not the slightest reason to accept either of these views. Political power is always abused; an unrepresented class is always plundered. Nor are democracies pacific, except by accident. At present they do not wish to see the capital which they regard as their prospective prey dissipated in war; and for this reason their influence in our time will probably be on the side of peace. But, as soon as the competition of cheap Asiatic labour becomes acute, we may expect to see the democracies bellicose and the employing class pacific. This is not guess-work; we already see how the democracies of California and Australia behave towards immigrants from Asia. Readers of Anatole France will remember his description of the economic wars decreed by the Senate of the great republic, at the end of 'L'Île des Pingouins.' It would, indeed, be difficult to prove that the expansion of the United States has differed much, in methods and morals, from that of the European monarchies; and the methods of trade-unions are the methods of pitiless belligerency. Democracy and socialism are broken reeds for the lover of peace to lean upon.

In conclusion, our answer to the indictment against Christianity is that institutional religion does not represent the Gospel of Christ, but the opinions of a mass of nominal Christians. It cannot be expected to do much more than look after its own interests and reflect the moral ideas of its supporters. The real Gospel, if it were accepted, would pull up by the roots not only militarism but its analogue in civil life, the desire to exploit other people for private gain. But it is not accepted. We have seen that the Founder of Christianity had no illusions as to the reception which His message of redemption would meet with. The 'Prince of this World' is not Christ, but the Devil. Nevertheless, He did speak of the 'whole lump' being gradually leavened, and we shall not exceed the limits of a reasonable and justifiable optimism if we hope that the accumulated experience of humanity, and perhaps a real though very slow modification for the better of human nature itself, may at last eliminate the wickedest and most insane of our maleficent institutions. The human race has probably hundreds of thousands of years to live, whereas our so-called civilisation cannot be traced back for more than a few thousand years. The time when 'nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,' will probably come at last, though no one can predict what the conditions will be which will make such a change possible.

The signs are not very favourable at present for internationalism. The great nations, bankrupt and honey-combed with social unrest, will be obliged after the war to organise themselves as units, with governments strong enough to put down revolutions, and directed by men of the highest mercantile ability, whose main function will be to increase productiveness and stop waste. We may even see Germany mobilised as one gigantic trust for capturing markets and regulating prices. A combination so formidable would compel other nations, and our own certainly among the number, to adopt a similar organisation. This would, of course, mean a complete victory for bureaucratic state-socialism, and the defeat of democracy and trade-union syndicalism. Such a change, which few would just now welcome, will occur if no other form of state is able to survive; and this is what we may live to see. But there is no finality about any experiments in government. A period of internationalism may follow the intense nationalism which historical critics foresee for the twentieth century. Or perhaps the international labour-organisations may be too strong for the centralising forces. It is just possible that Labour, by a concerted movement during the violent reaction against militarism which will probably follow the war, will forbid any further military or naval preparations to be made.

Whatever forms reconstruction may take, Christianity will have its part to play in making the new Europe. It will be able to point to the terrible vindication of its doctrines in the misery and ruin which have overtaken a world which has rejected its valuations and scorned its precepts. It is not Christianity which has been judged and condemned at the bar of civilisation; it is civilisation which has destroyed itself because it has honoured Christ with its lips, while its heart has been far from Him. But a spiritual religion can win a victory only within its own sphere. It can promise no Deuteronomic catalogue of blessings and cursings to those who obey or disobey its principles. Social happiness and peace would certainly follow a whole-hearted acceptance of Christian principles; but they would not certainly bring wealth or empire. 'Philosophy,' said Hegel, 'will bake no man's bread'; and it is only in a spiritual sense that the meek-spirited can expect to possess the earth. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to suppose that a Christian nation would be unable to hold its own in the struggle for existence. A nation in which every citizen endeavoured to pay his way and to help his neighbour would be in no danger of servitude or extinction. The mills of God grind slowly, but the future does not belong to lawless violence. In the long run, the wisdom that is from above will be justified in her children.

[The end]
William Ralph Inge's essay: Indictment Against Christianity

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN